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Astronomy
&
Astrophysics
A&A 495, 1033–1060 (2009)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:200811102
c ESO 2009
An optical spectroscopic survey of the 3CR sample
of radio galaxies with z < 0.3
I. Presentation of the data
S. Buttiglione1 , A. Capetti2 , A. Celotti1 , D. J. Axon3 , M. Chiaberge4,5 , F. D. Macchetto4 , and W. B. Sparks4
1
2
3
4
5
SISSA-ISAS, via Beirut 2-4, 34014 Trieste, Italy
e-mail: buttigli@sissa.it
INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino, Strada Osservatorio 20, 10025 Pino Torinese, Italy
Department of Physics, Rochester Institute of Technology, 85 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623, USA
Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
INAF-IRA, Via P. Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
Received 7 October 2008 / Accepted 18 December 2008
ABSTRACT
We present a homogeneous and 92% complete dataset of optical nuclear spectra for the 113 3CR radio sources with redshifts <0.3,
obtained with the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo. For these sources we could obtain uniform and uninterrupted coverage of the key
spectroscopic optical diagnostics. The observed sample, including powerful classical FR II radio-galaxies and FR I, together spanning
four orders of magnitude in radio-luminosity, provides a broad representation of the spectroscopic properties of radio galaxies. In this
first paper we present an atlas of the spectra obtained, provide measurements of the diagnostic emission line ratios, and identify active
nuclei with broad line emission. These data will be used in follow-up papers to address the connection between the optical spectral
characteristics and the multiwavelength properties of the sample.
Key words. galaxies: active – galaxies: jets – galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD – galaxies: nuclei
1. Introduction
Radio galaxies (RG) are an important class of extragalactic objects for many reasons. They are extremely interesting in their
own right, representing one of the most energetic astrophysical
phenomena. The intense nuclear emission and collimated jets
can influence the star formation history, excitation, and ionization of the ISM, representing a fundamental ingredient for the
formation and evolution of their hosts but also of their larger
scale environment. The host galaxies are giant early-type galaxies, often situated centrally in galaxy clusters; indeed, with their
symbiotic relationship, central dominant ellipticals and the AGN
phenomenon encompass many of the major cosmological and
astrophysical issues we confront today. These include the ubiquity and growth of supermassive black holes, their relationship
to the host, the onset of nuclear activity, the nature of their jets
and the interaction with the interstellar medium, and the physics
of the central engine itself. In particular, studies of radio-loud
AGN are the key to understanding the processes leading to the
ejection of material in relativistic jets, its connection with gas
accretion onto the central black holes, the way that diﬀerent levels of accretion are related to the process of jets launching, the
origin of the AGN onset, and its lifetime.
The attractiveness of the 3CR catalog of radio sources as a
basis for such a study is obvious, being one of the best studied
sample of RG. Its selection criteria are unbiased with respect to
Based on observations made with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale
Galileo operated on the island of La Palma by the Centro Galileo Galilei
of INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio
del Roque del los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias.
optical properties and orientation, and it spans a relatively wide
range in redshift and radio power. A vast suite of observations is
available for this sample, from multi-band HST imaging, to observations with Chandra, Spitzer and the VLA, that can be used
to address the issues listed above in a robust multiwavelength
approach.
Quite surprisingly, despite the great interest of the community, the available optical spectroscopic data for the 3CR sample
are sparse and incomplete.
To fill this gap, we carried out a homogeneous and complete
survey of optical spectroscopy. We targeted the complete subsample of 113 3CR radio sources with z < 0.3, for which we
can obtain uniform uninterrupted coverage of the key spectroscopic optical diagnostics. The observed sources include a significant number of powerful classical FR II RG, as well as the
more common (at low redshift) FR Is (Fanaroﬀ & Riley 1974),
spanning four orders of magnitude in radio luminosity, thus providing a broad representation of the spectroscopic properties of
radio-loud AGN.
The primary goals of this survey are (we defer the detailed
list of bibliographical references to the follow-up papers dealing
with the specific issues):
– to measure luminosities and ratios of the key diagnostic
emission line; these will be used to prove the possible existence (and to characterize the properties) of diﬀerent spectroscopic subpopulations of radio-loud AGN;
– to explore the presence of broad Balmer lines in the diﬀerent subclasses of RGs, separated on the basis of e.g. radio
morphology and diagnostic line ratios;
Article published by EDP Sciences
1034
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
– to perform a detailed test on the unified models for RL AGN,
taking advantage of the uniform dataset, of the sample completeness, and of the accurate spectral characterization;
– to compare the spectral properties of radio-loud and radioquiet AGN;
– to analyze the host galaxy properties from the point of view
of its stellar component, looking for connections between the
nuclear activity (and its onset) and the star formation history
of the host;
– to address the connection between the optical spectral characteristics and the multiwavelength properties of the sample,
derived combining HST, Chandra, Spitzer and VLA data;
– to study the environment of radio sources (using the target
acquisition images);
– to explore the properties of the oﬀ-nuclear gas (e.g. spatially
resolved line ratios and velocity fields) and stellar component by using the full two dimensional dataset.
The paper is organized as follows: in Sect. 2 we present the sample, the observational procedure and the data reduction, leading
to an atlas of calibrated spectra. In Sect. 3 we provide measurements of the emission line fluxes, obtained after separating the
starlight from the emission of the active nucleus. In Sect. 4 we
describe the quality of the resulting measurements and describe
in more details the RGs showing broad emission lines. A summary is given in Sect. 5.
Throughout, we have used H0 = 71 km s−1 Mpc−1 , ΩΛ =
0.73 and Ωm = 0.27.
2. Observations and data reduction
2.1. Sample selection
The Third Cambridge (3C) Catalogue of radio sources was compiled by Edge et al. (1959): they used the Cambridge double
Interferometer to detect all the radio emitters at a frequency of
159 MHz, resulting in 471 sources catalogued.
Bennett (1962a,b) revised the catalog creating the 3CR version. He obtained new observational data to provide a complete
and reliable list for all sources with a flux density greater than
Fr > 9 Jy at a frequency of 178 MHz and for which the declination is δ > −05◦ degrees (apart from some limitations for
sources of low surface brightness). The revision excluded some
sources from the catalog (as being below the flux limit or as resolved blends of adjacent sources) and included other sources
(as extended sources with diameters up to 1◦ ). 328 sources are
catalogued in the 3CR. Spinrad et al. (1985) identified the optical counterparts and measured the redshift of the 298 extragalactic sources in the 3CR. Our sample comprises all of the
113 3CR sources from Spinrad et al. (1985) with z < 0.3. We
only excluded 3C 231 (M 82, a starburst galaxy) and 3C 71
(NGC 1068, a Seyfert galaxy).
Here we present the optical spectra of 104 3CR objects.
2.2. Observations
All but 18 optical spectra were taken with the Telescopio
Nazionale Galileo (TNG), a 3.58 m optical/infrared telescope located on the Roque de los Muchachos in La Palma Canary Island
(Spain). The observations were made using the DOLORES
(Device Optimized for the LOw RESolution) spectrograph installed at the Nasmyth B focus of the telescope. The observations
were organized into four runs of 4−5 nights per run starting from
November 2006 and ending on January 2008. The chosen longslit width is 2 : it is centered on the nucleus of the sources and it
Table 1. Detectors used for the survey.
CCD
2100 × 2100 pix
1
2
Type
Loral
E2V4240
Pixel size
μm
15.0
13.5
Scale
pix−1
0.275
0.252
FOV
9.40
8.60
Table 2. Grisms used for the observations.
Grism
LR-B
VHR-R
VHR-I
Dispersion
(Å pixels−1 )
2.52
0.70
0.68
Resol.
(2 slit)
1200
5000
6000
λ range
CCD 1
3500–8050
6050–7800
7200–8900
λ range
CCD 2
3500–7700
6100–7700
7250–8800
Table 3. Observational strategy.
Redshift range
z < 0.100
0.100 < z < 0.175
0.175 < z < 0.200
0.200 < z < 0.300
T exp(LRB) (s)
500
750
750
1000
HR grism
VHR-R
VHR-R
VHR-I
VHR-I
T exp(HR) (s)
1000
1500
1500
2000
is aligned along the parallactic angle in order to minimize light
losses due to atmospheric dispersion.
For the first run (22−25 November 2006) and the second
run (12 April 2007), the detector was a Loral thinned and backilluminated CCD. For the third run (6−18 August 2007) and the
fourth run (4−8 January 2008) a new thinned, back-illuminated,
E2V 4240 CCD had been installed. It has a smaller pixel size
and the field of view is decreased by ∼1 arcmin. More details on
the CCD detectors are listed in Table 1.
For each target we took:
– one acquisition image (240 s) in R band;
– one (or two) low resolution spectrum with the LR-B grism
(∼3500−8000 Å) with a resolution of ∼20 Å;
– two high resolution spectra with the VHR-R (6100−7800 Å)
or VHR-I (7200−8900 Å) grisms with a resolution of ∼5 Å.
The spectral coverages of the spectra are reported in Table 2. The
grism wavelength ranges change slightly between the two CCDs
because of the small diﬀerence in the pixel size. The observational strategy is summarized in Table 3. In order to compensate
for the galaxies’ dimming with (1 + z)4 , the exposure times depend on the source redshifts. We divided the targets into three
groups:
– for z < 0.1 texp (LR-B) = 500 s;
– for 0.1 < z < 0.2 texp (LR-B) = 750 s;
– for 0.2 < z < 0.3 texp (LR-B) = 1000 s.
The 1000 s exposures were divided into two subexposures
of 500 s. The high resolution spectra have an exposure time
twice the low resolution ones. For each target, the VHR-R or
VHR-I grisms are chosen in such a way that the [O I]λλ6300,
64 Å lines are observable, i.e.:
– VHR-R for z < 0.175;
– VHR-I for z > 0.175.
The combination of the LR-B and VHR ranges of wavelengths
enables us to cover the most relevant emission lines of the optical spectrum and in particular the key diagnostic lines Hβ,
[O III]λλ4959, 5007, [O I]λλ6300, 64, Hα, [N II]λλ6548, 84,
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
[S II]λλ6716, 31. The high resolution spectra are a sort of zoom
on the Hα region with the aim of resolving the Hα from the
[N II] doublet, as well as the two lines of the [S II] doublet.
Table 4 provides the journal of observations for the four runs
and the main information on the sources: (1) name of the source;
(2) and (3) J2000 coordinates; (4) redshift; (5) date of observation; (6) CCD used in reference to Table 1; (7) number of low
resolution spectra; (8) exposure time for each low resolution
spectrum; (9) high resolution grism used; (10) number of high
resolution spectra; (11) exposure time for each high resolution
spectrum. In some cases the exposure times were increased because of bad sky conditions (i.e. seeing >2.5 ): these sources are
identified with an “a” in the note column of Table 4.
Nine sources of our sample (namely 3C 020, 3C 063, 3C 132,
3C 288, 3C 346, 3C 349, 3C 403.1, 3C 410, 3C 458) could not
be observed due to scheduling problems and time constraints.
Since these sources were excluded for random reasons from the
observing list we believe that they do not induce any bias in the
sample. We verified a posteriori that they are apparently randomly distributed in the sky, as well as within the distributions
of radio power and redshift of the whole sample.
2.3. Data reduction
The LONGSLIT package of NOAO’s IRAF1 reduction software
was used in order to:
– subtract the bias from each science image (we used the overscan region of each image);
– divide the science images for the flat field (created from the
halogen lamp emission);
– subtract the background; most observations were split into
two subexposures (with only the exception of the LR-B spectra of low redshift galaxies, see Table 4) obtained moving
the target by 25 or 50 along the slit. Subtraction of the
two subexposures removes most of the sky background. The
residual background (due to changes in sky brightness or for
the single LR-B spectra) was subtracted measuring the average on each pixel along the dispersion direction in spatial
regions immediately surrounding the source spectrum;
– wavelength calibrate the images using the calibration lamps
(Ar, Ne and He);
– correct the optical distortions by fitting polynomial functions
along both the horizontal and vertical directions of the CCD
to the lamp spectra;
– flux calibrate the spectra using spectrophotometric standard
stars. We observed two or three standard stars per night using
the same telescope configuration used for the targets.
We then extracted and summed a region of 2 along the spatial
direction, resulting in a region covered by our spectra of 2 × 2 .
For each galaxy, multiple exposures taken with the same setting
were averaged into a single spectrum.
The accuracy of the relative flux calibration was estimated
from the residuals of the calibration of the standard stars; comparison of the calibrated spectra obtained using the diﬀerent
standard stars observed during the same night implies that our
flux calibration agrees to within a <5% level.
More than 75% of the nights were photometric and we therefore expect a rather stable absolute flux calibration. This result
1
IRAF is the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility of the National
Optical Astronomy Observatories, which are operated by AURA, Inc.,
under contract with the US National Science Foundation. It is also
available at http://iraf.noao.edu/
1035
was checked for 20 objects of the sample randomly selected using their HST R-band images (Martel et al. 1999; de Koﬀ et al.
1996). The procedure used for the comparison is the following:
we smoothed the HST image to the seeing measured in the acquisition TNG image, extracted a region corresponding to 2 ×
2 , and measured its flux based on the HST absolute flux calibration. We convolved the LR-B TNG spectra with the filter
transmission used to obtain the HST images (the broad band
F702W filter of the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2) and measured the flux within this spectral band. We compared these two
measurements and found an agreement within ∼20%. The absolute flux calibration of high resolution spectra was obtained
scaling them to the low resolution calibrated spectra.
The telluric absorption bands were usually left uncorrected
except in the few cases in which an emission line of interest fell
into these bands. In these cases we corrected the atmospheric
absorptions using the associated standard stars as templates.
Spectra for 18 3CR objects are available from the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database (York et al. 2000;
Stoughton et al. 2002; Yip et al. 2004), Data Release 4−6. Since
they have comparable signal to noise, resolution and wavelength
coverage (3800−9200 Å) of the TNG spectra, we decided not to
observe them at the TNG and to use the SDSS spectra for our
analysis.
Figure 1 shows, for all the observed targets, the low
resolution spectrum (upper image) and the high resolution
one (bottom image). The calibrated spectra are in units of
10−18 erg cm−2 s−1 Å−1 . The wavelengths (in Å units) are in the
observer frame in the axes below the images while they are in
the source frame in the axes above them. The three main telluric
absorption bands are indicated as circles with a cross inside.
3. Data analysis
3.1. Starlight subtraction
The extraction apertures contain, in addition to the emission produced by the active nucleus, a substantial contribution from the
host galaxy starlight. In order to proceed in our analysis it is necessary to separate these two components by modeling the stellar
emission.
In order to prepare the spectra for the stellar removal, we
corrected for reddening due to the Galaxy (Burstein & Heiles
1982, 1984) using the extinction law of Cardelli et al. (1989).
The galactic extinction E(B − V) used for each object was taken
from the NASA Extragalactic Database (NED) database and is
listed in Table 6. We also deredshifted the spectra using the value
of redshift from NED.
The spectra modeling was done considering two wavelength
ranges of ∼1000 Å centered on the Hα line from the HR spectrum and on the Hβ line from the LR-B spectrum. For each of
the two ranges we subtracted the best fit single stellar population
(SSP) model taken from the Bruzual & Charlot (2003) library.
We selected a grid of 33 single stellar population models varying over 11 values of stellar ages (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9,
11, 13 Gyr) and three values of absolute metalicity (0.008, 0.02,
0.05), see Table 2. The templates assume a Salpeter Initial Mass
Function (IMF) formed in an instantaneous burst, with stars in
the mass range 0.1 M ≤ M ≤ 125 M . The parameters free
to vary independently of each other in order to obtain the best fit
are the stellar age, the metalicity, the normalization of the model,
the velocity dispersion (line-broadening function), and a small
1036
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Table 4. Log of the observations.
Name
3C 015
3C 017
3C 018
3C 028
3C 029
3C 031
3C 033
3C 033.1
3C 035
3C 040
3C 052
3C 061.1
3C 066B
3C 075N
3C 076.1
3C 078
3C 079
3C 083.1
3C 084
3C 088
3C 089
3C 093.1
3C 098
3C 105
3C 111
3C 123
3C 129
3C 129.1
3C 130
3C 133
3C 135
3C 136.1
3C 153
3C 165
3C 166
3C 171
3C 173.1
3C 180
3C 184.1
3C 192
3C 196.1
3C 197.1
3C 198
3C 213.1
3C 219
3C 223
3C 223.1
3C 227
3C 234
3C 236
3C 258
3C 264
3C 270
3C 272.1
Coordinates J2000
α
δ
00 37 04.15 –01 09 08.10
00 38 20.48 –02 07 40.21
00 40 50.51 +10 03 27.68
00 55 50.65 +26 24 36.93
00 57 34.88 –01 23 27.55
01 07 24.99 +32 24 45.02
01 08 52.87 +13 20 14.52
01 09 44.27 +73 11 57.20
01 12 02.29 +49 28 35.33
01 26 00.62 –01 20 42.43
01 48 28.90 +53 32 27.90
02 22 36.00 +86 19 08.00
02 23 11.46 +42 59 31.34
02 57 41.55 +06 01 36.58
03 03 15.00 +16 26 19.85
03 08 26.27 +04 06 39.40
03 10 00.10 +17 05 58.91
03 18 15.80 +41 51 28.00
03 19 48.22 +41 30 42.10
03 27 54.17 +02 33 41.82
03 34 15.57 –01 10 56.40
03 48 46.90 +33 53 15.00
03 58 54.43 +10 26 03.00
04 07 16.46 +03 42 25.68
04 18 21.05 +38 01 35.77
04 37 04.40 +29 40 13.20
04 49 09.07 +45 00 39.00
04 50 06.70 +45 03 06.00
04 52 52.78 +52 04 47.53
05 02 58.40 +25 16 28.00
05 14 08.30 +00 56 32.00
05 16 03.16 +24 58 25.24
06 09 32.50 +48 04 15.50
06 43 06.60 +23 19 03.00
06 45 24.10 +21 21 51.00
06 55 14.72 +54 08 58.27
07 09 24.34 +74 49 15.19
07 27 04.77 –02 04 30.97
07 43 01.28 +80 26 26.30
08 05 35.00 +24 09 50.00
08 15 27.73 –03 08 26.99
08 21 33.70 +47 02 37.00
08 22 31.90 +05 57 07.00
09 01 05.30 +29 01 46.00
09 21 08.64 +45 38 56.49
09 39 52.76 +35 53 59.12
09 41 24.04 +39 44 42.39
09 47 45.14 +07 25 20.33
10 01 49.50 +28 47 09.00
10 06 01.70 +34 54 10.00
11 24 43.80 +19 19 29.30
11 45 05.07 +19 36 22.60
12 19 23.29 +05 49 30.60
12 25 03.80 +12 53 12.70
z
0.073
0.2198
0.188
0.1952
0.0448
0.0167
0.0596
0.1809
0.0670
0.0185
0.2854
0.184
0.0215
0.0232
0.0324
0.0286
0.2559
0.0255
0.0176
0.0302
0.1386
0.2430
0.0304
0.089
0.0485
0.2177
0.0208
0.0222
0.1090
0.2775
0.1253
0.064
0.2769
0.2957
0.2449
0.2384
0.2921
0.22
0.1182
0.0598
0.198
0.1301
0.0815
0.194
0.1744
0.1368
0.107
0.0861
0.1848
0.1005
0.165
0.0217
0.0075
0.0035
Telescope information
date Obs.
CCD
09 Aug. 07
2
06 Jan. 08
2
22 Nov. 06
1
25 Nov. 06
1
23Nov06
1
10 Aug. 07
2
22 Nov. 06
1
08 Aug. 07
2
25 Nov. 06
1
25 Nov. 06
1
23 Nov. 06
1
05 Jan. 08
2
25 Nov. 06
1
23 Nov. 06
1
05 Jan. 08
2
04 Jan. 08
2
23 Nov. 06
1
08 Jan. 08
2
06 Jan. 08
2
25 Nov. 06
1
06 Jan. 08
2
05 Jan. 08
2
22 Nov. 06
1
06 Jan. 08
2
23 Nov. 06
1
06 Jan. 08
2
25 Nov. 06
1
22 Nov. 06
1
04 Jan. 08
2
05 Jan. 08
2
25 Nov. 06
1
23 Nov. 06
1
06 Jan. 08
2
08 Jan. 08
2
25 Nov. 06
1
22 Nov. 06
1
08 Jan. 08
2
12 Apr. 07
1
04 Jan. 08
2
SDSS
05 Jan. 08
2
SDSS
SDSS
SDSS
SDSS
SDSS
SDSS
SDSS
SDSS
SDSS
12 Apr. 07
1
12 Apr. 07
1
SDSS
04 Jan. 08
2
adjustment to the published redshift2 . We allowed for diﬀerent
models for the population in the Hβ and Hα regions. In fact,
as discussed in Sect. 3.3, the stellar content of radio galaxies is
often composed by populations of various ages and thence the
2
The redshifts resulting from the spectral fitting always agree within
the uncertainties with the published values with the only exception of
3C 130, for which we estimate z = 0.032 instead of z = 0.109, based on
the position of the Na D absorption feature.
n
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
3
2
2
2
2
2
1
–
2
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
1
1
–
1
Low Res.
T exp
500
500
900
750
500
500
600
750
500
500
500
900
500
500
500
500
500
500
500
500
750
500
500
500
500
500
500
500
750
500
500
500
500
500
500
500
500
500
750
–
750+375
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
750
500
–
500
High Res.
HR
n
T exp
HRR 2
500
HRI 2 1000
HRI 2
900
HRI 2
750
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
600
HRI 2
750
HRR 2
500
HRR 4
500
HRI 2 1000
HRI 2
900
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRI 2 1000
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRI 2
750
HRI 2 1000
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRI 2 1000
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
750
HRI 2 1000
HRR 2
500
HRR 2
500
HRI 3 1000
HRI 2 1000
HRI 2 1000
HRI 2 1000
HRI 2 1000
HRI 2 1000
HRR 2
750
–
–
–
HRI 3
750
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
HRR 2
750
HRR 2
500
–
–
–
HRR 2
500
Notes
i
f, g
c, f, g
l
i
c
a, f, h
a, i
i
a
i
i
e, i
e
i
h
f, h
a
f
a
f, g
f, g
f, h
f
e
i
i
dominant population can vary in diﬀerent bands. We excluded
from the fit the spectral regions corresponding to emission lines,
as well as other regions aﬀected by telluric absorption, cosmic
rays or other impurities. The SSP subtracted from the spectra are
listed in Table 5: for each source the best fit SSP and the χ2r are
reported for the two wavelength regions around Hα and Hβ.
In Fig. 2 we show a few examples of the process of removal
of the galaxy starlight. The six spectra presented are representative of the diﬀerent quality in the sample (in order of decreasing
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
1037
Table 4. continued.
Name
3C 273
3C 274
3C 277.3
3C 284
3C 285
3C 287.1
3C 293
3C 296
3C 300
3C 303
3C 303.1
3C 305
3C 310
3C 314.1
3C 315
3C 317
3C 318.1
3C 319
3C 321
3C 323.1
3C 326
3C 327
3C 332
3C 338
3C 348
3C 353
3C 357
3C 371
3C 379.1
3C 381
3C 382
3C 386
3C 388
3C 390.3
3C 401
3C 402
3C 403
3C 424
3C 430
3C 433
3C 436
3C 438
3C 442
3C 445
3C 449
3C 452
3C 456
3C 459
3C 460
3C 465
Coordinates J2000
α
δ
12 29 06.69 +02 03 08.60
12 30 49.49 +12 23 27.90
12 54 12.06 +27 37 32.66
13 11 04.70 +27 28 08.00
13 21 17.80 +42 35 15.00
13 32 53.27 +02 00 44.73
13 52 17.91 +31 26 46.50
14 16 52.94 +10 48 27.27
14 22 59.86 +19 35 36.99
14 43 02.74 +52 01 37.50
14 43 14.67 +77 07 26.59
14 49 21.77 +63 16 14.10
15 04 57.18 +26 00 56.87
15 10 23.12 +70 45 53.40
15 13 40.00 +26 07 27.00
15 16 44.57 +07 01 16.50
15 21 51.88 +07 42 31.73
15 24 04.88 +54 28 06.45
15 31 43.40 +24 04 19.00
15 47 43.53 +20 52 16.48
15 52 09.15 +20 05 23.70
16 02 27.40 +01 57 55.48
16 17 42.48 +32 22 32.74
16 28 38.38 +39 33 04.80
16 51 08.16 +04 59 33.84
17 20 28.16 –00 58 47.06
17 28 20.12 +31 46 02.22
18 06 50.60 +69 49 28.00
18 24 32.53 +74 20 58.64
18 33 46.29 +47 27 02.90
18 35 03.45 +32 41 46.18
18 38 26.27 +17 11 49.57
18 44 02.40 +45 33 30.00
18 42 09.00 +79 46 17.00
19 40 25.14 +60 41 36.85
19 41 46.00 +50 35 44.90
19 52 15.81 +02 30 24.40
20 48 12.12 +07 01 17.50
21 18 19.15 +60 48 06.88
21 23 44.60 +25 04 28.50
21 44 11.74 +28 10 18.67
21 55 52.30 +38 00 30.00
22 14 46.88 +13 50 27.22
22 23 49.57 –02 06 13.08
22 31 20.63 +39 21 30.07
22 45 48.90 +39 41 14.47
23 12 28.11 +09 19 23.59
23 16 35.24 +04 05 18.29
23 21 28.74 +23 46 49.66
23 38 29.41 +27 01 53.03
z
0.1583
0.0044
0.0857
0.2394
0.0794
0.2159
0.0450
0.0240
0.27
0.141
0.267
0.0416
0.0535
0.1197
0.1083
0.0345
0.0453
0.192
0.096
0.264
0.0895
0.1041
0.1517
0.0303
0.154
0.0304
0.1662
0.0500
0.256
0.1605
0.0578
0.0170
0.091
0.0561
0.2010
0.0239
0.0590
0.127
0.0541
0.1016
0.2145
0.290
0.0263
0.0562
0.0171
0.0811
0.2330
0.2199
0.268
0.0303
Telescope information
date Obs.
CCD
12 Apr. 07
1
05 Jan. 08
2
08 Jan. 08
2
06 Jan. 08
2
SDSS
SDSS
12 Apr. 07
1
SDSS
–
04 Jan. 08
2
SDSS
12 Apr. 07
1
SDSS
08 Aug. 07
2
07 Aug. 07
2
09 Aug. 07
2
11 Aug. 07
2
05 Jan. 08
2
09 Aug. 07
2
12 Apr. 07
1
SDSS
08 Aug. 07
2
07 Aug. 07
2
SDSS
06 Aug. 07
2
10 Aug. 07
2
11 Aug. 07
2
09 Aug. 07
2
10 Aug. 07
2
11 Aug. 07
2
07 Aug. 07
2
10 Aug. 07
2
08 Aug. 07
2
10−18 Aug. 07
2
08 Jan. 08
2
09 Aug. 07
2
08 Aug. 07
2
11 Aug. 07
2
10 Aug. 07
2
09 Aug. 07
2
08 Aug. 07
2
07 Aug. 07
2
18 Aug. 07
2
11 Aug. 07
2
06 Aug. 07
2
11 Aug. 07
2
11 Aug. 07
2
10 Aug. 07
2
23 Nov. 06
1
05 Jan. 08
2
07 Aug. 07
2
Low Res.
n
T exp
1
750
1
500
1
500
1
500
–
–
–
–
2
500
–
–
1
500
–
–
2
500
–
–
1
500
1
750
1
750
1
500
1
500
1
750
2
500
–
–
1
500
1
500
–
–
1
500
1
750
1
500
1
750
1
500
2
500
1
750
1
500
1
500
2
500
1
500
2
500
1
500
1
500
1
750
1
500
1
750
2
500
2
500
1
500
1
500
1
500
1
500
2
500
2
500
2
500
1
500
HR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRI
–
–
HRI
–
HRR
–
HRI
–
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRI
HRR
–
HRR
HRR
–
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRI
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRI
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRI
HRI
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRR
HRI
HRI
HRI
HRR
High Res.
n
T exp
1
750
2
500
2
500
1
1000
–
–
–
–
2
1000
–
–
2
500
–
–
2
1000
–
–
2
500
2
750
2
750
2
500
2
500
2
750
2
500
–
–
2
500
2
500
–
–
2 500-100
2
750
2
500
2
750
2
500
2
1000
2
750
2
500
2
500
4
500
2
500
2
1000
2
500
2
500
2
750
2
500
2
750
2
1000
2
1000
2
500
2
500
2
500
2
500
2
1000
2
1000
2
1000
2
500
Notes
d, f, h
i
b
f, g
e
f, g
e
e
h
h
a, i
l
l, h
l
h
a, i
h
i
i
h
i
i
Column description: (1) 3C name of the source; (2) and (3) J2000 coordinates (right ascension and declination); (4) redshift; for the TNG observations: (5) UT night of observation; (6) CCD used; (7) number of low resolution spectra; (8) exposure time for each low resolution spectrum;
(9) high resolution grism used; (10) number of high resolution spectra; (11) exposure time for each high resolution spectrum. Column (12):
(a) longer exposure times because of bad seeing conditions; (b) exposure shortened because of bad weather conditions and closure telescope;
(c) longer exposure times because of first night; (d) observed one HR spectrum; (e) seeing >2 ; (f) broad components; (g) broad ssp range; (h) no
starlight subtraction; (i) oﬀ-nuclear starlight subtraction; (l) telluric correction.
signal-to-noise ratio from top to bottom). We show separately
galaxies with diﬀerent levels of line equivalent widths (high EW
in the right two columns, low EW in the left 2 columns).
In a few galaxies the continuum is essentially featureless (see
for example, 3C 084 in Fig. 1) and it is likely to be dominated
by non-stellar emission. No starlight subtraction was performed
for these objects. In several spectra a first attempt to model the
starlight left substantial positive residuals in the region surrounding the Hβ and/or Hα lines, indicative of the presence of a broad
line component. In these cases we flagged a spectral region extending over between 100 and 200 Å around the broad line, extended the spectral range considered, and repeated the fitting
procedure (see Fig. 3 for an example).
1038
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 1. For each source the low (upper panels) and high resolution (bottom panels) spectra are shown. The fluxes are in units of erg cm−2 s−1 Å−1
while the wavelengths are in Å. The lower axes of the spectra show the observed wavelengths while the upper axes show the rest frame wavelengths.
The three main telluric absorption bands are indicated with circled crosses. For the SDSS spectra we report the whole spectrum in the upper panel
and a zoom of ∼2000 Å around the Hα line in the bottom panel.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 1. continued.
1039
1040
Fig. 1. continued.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 1. continued.
1041
1042
Fig. 1. continued.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 1. continued.
1043
1044
Fig. 1. continued.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 1. continued.
1045
1046
Fig. 1. continued.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 1. continued.
1047
1048
Fig. 1. continued.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 1. continued.
1049
1050
Fig. 1. continued.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 2. Examples of the process of removal of the galaxies’ starlight. The six galaxies presented are representative of the diﬀerent quality in the sample (in order of decreasing signal-to-noise ratio
from top to bottom) and of diﬀerent levels of line equivalent widths (high EW in the left two columns, low EW in the right two columns). The original spectrum is the upper solid black line; the
best fit Single Stellar Population (SSP) model is in red; the lower solid black line is the residual spectrum after SSP subtraction; the dashed blue line is a reference zero level. The flux is measured
in 10−18 erg cm−2 s−1 Å−1 while the wavelength is in Å, in rest frame in the lower axes and in observed frame in the axes above.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
1051
1052
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Table 5. Summary of the single stellar population fitting.
Name
Hβ
Hα
Name
SSP
χ2r
SSP
χ2r
16
8
28
29
28
28
7
30
28
29
18
28
32
30
32
7
32
31
30
19
26
31
33
33
32
32
18
29
32
31
31
18
17
27
8
30
30
27
10
16
17
7
20
30
31
2
6.29
2.22
0.81
1.04
2.21
4.50
1.43
1.76
7.03
0.90
0.83
4.23
1.93
2.50
1.18
1.83
4.19
1.63
1.77
1.00
1.91
0.86
1.98
0.69
0.88
0.82
0.87
0.95
1.18
0.95
0.71
0.95
0.85
0.83
0.83
1.92
1.65
0.85
1.91
1.42
0.76
1.75
1.59
1.54
1.40
1.63
27
33
10
11
28
28
29
22
28
33
33
28
22
11
11
10
33
32
22
32
27
33
33
33
32
22
10
11
32
22
10
33
20
16
21
22
22
6
20
7
7
20
29
22
22
1
1.72
1.63
1.12
0.88
1.53
1.43
0.92
0.89
2.52
1.00
0.99
2.31
2.94
1.29
0.78
1.10
7.56
1.08
0.88
0.95
2.18
1.12
3.07
0.98
0.68
0.64
0.97
1.07
1.22
1.52
1.92
1.00
1.13
0.75
0.92
1.31
1.14
1.33
1.89
1.36
0.99
1.47
0.95
1.33
1.05
0.87
3C 015
3C 017
3C 018
3C 028
3C 029
3C 031
3C 033
3C 035
3C 040
3C 052
3C 061.1
3C 066
3C 075
3C 076.1
3C 078
3C 079
3C 083.1
3C 088
3C 089
3C 093.1
3C 098
3C 105
3C 123
3C 129
3C 129.1
3C 130
3C 133
3C 135
3C 136.1
3C 153
3C 165
3C 166
3C 171
3C 173.1
3C 180
3C 184.1
3C 192
3C 196.1
3C 197.1
3C 198
3C 213.1
3C 219
3C 223
3C 223.1
3C 236
3C 258
Age (Gyr)
Z = 0.008
Z = 0.02
Z = 0.05
0.1
1
12
23
0.3
2
13
24
Hβ
χ2r
SSP
χ2r
29
31
32
27
31
26
22
8
21
31
11
16
6
10
29
30
11
31
31
8
29
31
30
31
29
33
28
22
8
3
29
28
17
29
30
28
29
30
26
30
27
31
15
14
29
31
12.43
2.41
7.88
23.84
1.70
1.28
1.49
1.21
1.26
3.84
0.64
1.53
0.83
2.15
1.34
0.90
1.49
2.68
2.47
1.45
1.51
1.16
1.77
5.54
0.92
2.06
1.38
1.11
2.92
2.04
2.79
1.31
2.13
1.26
1.52
1.02
2.04
0.74
0.84
7.43
9.70
2.24
1.43
0.81
0.89
2.20
22
22
22
27
22
15
22
10
33
22
33
27
27
22
28
22
22
22
22
33
11
22
33
22
21
22
28
22
29
25
31
16
28
29
31
18
31
28
24
22
28
22
26
27
33
22
2.29
3.41
2.60
1.09
0.90
1.50
1.69
1.51
1.19
2.54
1.60
1.02
1.04
1.39
2.09
0.81
1.13
1.68
1.13
0.96
0.91
1.08
1.74
1.35
0.86
1.28
1.07
0.96
0.63
1.35
3.05
0.75
1.36
1.99
0.63
1.08
1.54
1.32
1.06
1.09
1.29
0.98
1.07
1.12
0.98
1.79
3C 264
3C 270
3C 272.1
3C 274
3C 277.3
3C 284
3C 285
3C 287.1
3C 293
3C 296
3C 300
3C 303
3C 303.1
3C 305
3C 310
3C 314.1
3C 315
3C 317
3C 318.1
3C 319
3C 321
3C 326
3C 327
3C 338
3C 348
3C 353
3C 357
3C 379.1
3C 381
3C 386
3C 388
3C 401
3C 402
3C 403
3C 424
3C 430
3C 433
3C 436
3C 438
3C 442
3C 449
3C 452
3C 456
3C 459
3C 460
3C 465
Legenda for the SSP code.
0.5
1
2
3
5
3
4
5
6
7
14 15 16 17 18
25 26 27 28 29
For a few objects, we used a diﬀerent technique to remove
the galactic emission because we did not find a satisfactory fit
using the template models. We then used as template the spectra
Hα
SSP
7
8
19
30
9
9
20
31
11
10
21
32
13
11
22
33
extracted from two oﬀ-nuclear regions, flanking the nuclear
aperture, summed over a spatial aperture of 2 and appropriately scaled to match the nuclear spectrum. An example of this
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
1053
Fig. 3. 3C 303: example of starlight removal for a radio galaxy with prominent broad line emission. For the line legend see Fig. 2.
Fig. 4. 3C 031: example of starlight subtraction using the oﬀ-nuclear galactic emission as template. We compare the results obtained from the
standard modeling technique (left panel) and from the oﬀ-nuclear subtraction (right panel). In the latter case, the residuals have a lower amplitude
and show the presence of the Hβ and [O III] lines. For the line legend see Fig. 2.
method is given in Fig. 4. The objects in which one of these
diﬀerent approaches was adopted are marked appropriately in
Table 4.
The case of 3C 386 deserves a special note. Lynds (1971)
reports that the peculiar observational characteristics of 3C 386
result from the chance superposition of a F7 star on the galaxy’s
nucleus. This is confirmed by our spectra that show strong
Balmer absorption lines at zero redshift accompanied by absorption and emission features at the redshift of the radio galaxy,
z = 0.0177 (see Fig. 5). Before modeling the stellar population
of this galaxy, we removed the contribution of the foreground
star. We obtain the best match of the absorption lines of the star
using a F5V stellar template (from Pickles 1998), with the same
reddening of the galaxy, E(B − V) = 0.335. The low resolution
spectrum resulting from subtracting the foreground star is shown
in Fig. 5 where we also present the Hα spectral region from the
high resolution spectrum, with a well visible Hα+[N II] triplet
and [S II] doublet. No broad Hα line is visible in this spectrum
in contrast to the result of Simpson et al. (1996).
3.2. Measurement of the emission lines fluxes
The next step of our analysis consists of the measurement of the
emission line intensities for which we used the specfit package
in IRAF. We measured line intensities fitting Gaussian profiles
to Hβ, [O III]λλ4959, 5007, [O I]λλ6300, 64, Hα, [N II]λλ6548,
84, and [S II]λλ6716, 31. Some constraints were adopted to reduce the number of free parameters: we required the FWHM and
the velocity to be the same for all the lines. The integrated fluxes
of each line were free to vary except for those with known ratios
from atomic physics: i.e. the [O I]λλ6300, 64, [O III]λλ4959,
5007 and [N II]λλ6548, 84 doublets. Where required, we insert
a linear continuum.
Table 6 summarizes the intensities of the main emission lines
(dereddened for Galactic absorption) relative to the intensity of
the narrow component of Hα, for which we give flux and luminosity. To each line we associated its relative error, as a percentage. We placed upper limits at a 3σ level to the undetected,
but diagnostically important, emission lines by measuring the
noise level in the regions surrounding the expected positions of
the lines, and adopting as line width the instrumental resolution.
When no emission lines are visible, we only report the upper
limit for Hα. The missing values in Table 6 correspond to lines
outside the coverage of the spectra or severely aﬀected by telluric bands.
For the galaxies with a broad-line component we first attempted to reproduce the BLR emission with a gaussian profile, allowing for velocity shifts with respect to the narrow lines
and also for line asymmetry. Most line profiles were well reproduced, but in some cases (e.g. 3C 332) two gaussians had to be
included. Nonetheless, in 3C 111 and in 3C 445 the broad line
1054
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 5. The case of 3C 386: a Galactic star superposed on the radio
galaxy nucleus. We show the low resolution spectrum, the F5V stellar template adopted, and the resulting spectrum of the galaxy. In the
bottom right corner we show also the spectrum of 3C 386 around
the Hα line obtained from the high resolution data (vertically oﬀset
for clarity).
profile is so complex, and the prominence of the broad component with respect to narrow lines is so large, it precludes any
attempt to measure the [N II] doublet and the narrow component
of Hα (or Hβ in the blue region of the spectrum). For these objects we use the [O III] line as reference instead of the narrow
Hα component. No narrow lines are visible in 3C 273 and we
only report its broad Hα flux. For all 18 galaxies with a broad
Hα component we also give its flux in Table 6. These objects
will be discussed in more detail in Sect. 4.3.
3.3. On the effects of template mis-match on the emission
lines fluxes
An important issue related to the subtraction of the stellar component is the eﬀect of the template mis-match for the measurements of the emission lines. This is particularly important for the
estimate of Hβ in the galaxies showing emission lines of relatively low equivalent width. In fact they can be strongly aﬀected
by the level of the absorption features associated to the stellar
population.
We consider as an example the case of 3C 310. Its spectrum
is of average quality in our dataset and it shows only weak emission lines, while the Hβ line is, at most, marginally detected in its
spectrum. The best fitting stellar population has an age of 5 Gyr
and a metalicity of Z = 0.05 and it is shown in red in the middle
panel of Fig. 6 superposed on the original spectrum. In the residual spectrum a well defined Hβ line emerges in emission, caused
by the removal of a substantial absorption associated with the
stellar emission. This indicates that its intensity is strongly influenced by the choice of the stellar template. To associate a proper
error to this procedure it is necessary to establish the range of
acceptable stellar models (in terms of age and metalicity) and
the resulting uncertainty in the line measurement.
As a formal error propagation across all steps of the data
reduction is clearly unfeasible, we estimated the typical error
of our spectra by measuring the rms flux in continuum dominated spectral regions. Even with this approach, the value of
minimum reduced χ2r obtained from the best fitting stellar population is often larger than the value indicative of a good fit
(χ2r ∼ 1) and this is in contrast with the fact that the stellar
models seem to trace in general the spectra rather well. There
are several reasons for this discrepancy: i) the χ2r is not properly
normalized (e.g. because not all data points are independent);
ii) our estimate of the signal-to-noise ratio does not include the
uncertainties in e.g. the wavelength and flux calibration; iii) there
are real mismatches between data and models, in part caused by
the use of a discrete grid of stellar models. We then decided,
when necessary, to rescale our error bars such that the overall
best fitting model provides χ2 /d.o.f. = 1, following the approach
proposed by Barth et al. (2001) in a diﬀerent context. This is
a conservative approach since it has the eﬀect of increasing the
range of the acceptable templates with respect to what would
have been obtained only using the measured rms of each spectrum.
We consider as acceptable templates all stellar populations
for which the resulting χ2 is increased by less than Δχ2 = 9.21,
corresponding to a confidence level of 99% (∼2.6σ level) for
2 parameters. In the case of 3C 310, the error derived setting χ2r = 1 is 9.5 × 10−18 erg cm−2 s−1 Å−1 . This value is
similar to the rms of the stellar subtracted spectrum, which is
8.2 × 10−18 erg cm−2 s−1 Å−1 . Adopting the procedure outlined above, the best fit is the only statistically acceptable model.
Nonetheless, in Fig. 6 we show the two models with the lower
values of χ2r , diﬀering by one step in metalicity or age. In both
cases significant residuals already emerge in the continuum subtracted spectrum, confirming visually the poorer quality of the
fit. We re-estimate the Hβ flux resulting from these two templates. They diﬀer by ∼4% with respect to our original measurement using the best fit model. This is lower than the statistical error associated by specfit to this measurement, which
is 7%. We conclude that, in the case of 3C 310, a possible template mis-match does not have a significant eﬀect on the Hβ flux
measurement.
The influence of the stellar templates on the other emission
lines (and in particular on the Hα line that is >
∼3 brighter that
Hβ while they have the same EW in absorption) is negligible
because the stellar population has not significant absorption features at the line wavelengths.
For the majority of the sources, only models diﬀering by at
most one step in age or in metalicity are consistent with the data,
without a significant impact on the Hβ flux. Only for the lower
quality spectra can this range be broader. For low SNR spectra,
coupled with emission lines of low equivalent widths, the resulting measurement error is dominated by the choice of the stellar
template. In these cases we adopted the following strategy: we
subtracted the acceptable template with the lowest age (i.e. with
the strongest Hβ absorption) and considered the Hβ measurement as an upper limit. One of such galaxy is 3C 173.1, already
shown in the bottom right panel of Fig. 2.
Finally we note that our approach to the starlight subtraction is limited to the choice of the best fitting single population model, similarly to the method adopted by Kauﬀmann et al.
(2003) for the SDSS sample of emission line galaxies and by
Tadhunter et al. (1993) for the 2 Jy sample of radio galaxies.
Nonetheless, this procedure does not grasp the complexity of
the emission processes in radio galaxies. As clearly shown by
several studies in the literature the stellar content of radio galaxies is often composed by populations of diﬀerent ages, and there
are also evidence for internal absorption, particularly associated
to the young stars component (e.g. Wills et al. 2004; Raimann
et al. 2005; Tadhunter et al. 2005; Holt et al. 2007). The presence of stars of various ages is indirectly confirmed by the fact
that the best fit stellar population found in the Hβ regions is on
average ∼ one step in age younger than for the Hα band. This
can be explained by the higher relative contribution of young
stars at shorter wavelengths that drives the age of the SSP to
lower values with respect to the redder part of of the spectrum.
Name
3C 015.0
3C 017.0
3C 018.0
3C 028.0
3C 029.0
3C 031.0
3C 033.0
3C 033.1
3C 035.0
3C 040.0
3C 052.0
3C 061.1
3C 066B
3C 075N
3C 076.1
3C 078.0
3C 079.0
3C 083.1
3C 084.0
3C 088.0
3C 089.0
3C 093.1
3C 098.0
3C 105.0
3C 111.0
3C 123.0
3C 129.0
3C 129.1
3C 130.0
3C 133.0
3C 135.0
3C 136.1
3C 153.0
3C 165.0
3C 166.0
3C 171.0
3C 173.1
3C 180.0
3C 184.1
3C 192.0
3C 196.1
3C 197.1
3C 198.0
Redshift
0.073
0.220
0.188
0.195
0.045
0.017
0.060
0.181
0.067
0.019
0.285
0.184
0.022
0.023
0.033
0.029
0.256
0.027
0.018
0.030
0.139
0.243
0.030
0.089
0.049
0.218
0.022
0.022
0.032
0.278
0.125
0.064
0.277
0.296
0.245
0.238
0.292
0.220
0.118
0.060
0.198
0.128
0.082
Table 6. Emission line measurements.
E(B − V)
0.022
0.023
0.158
0.058
0.036
0.001
0.028
0.633
0.141
0.041
0.232
0.176
0.080
0.180
0.138
0.173
0.127
0.164
0.163
0.126
0.134
0.389
0.229
0.480
1.647
0.981
1.058
1.131
1.309
0.949
0.115
0.762
0.162
0.174
0.211
0.054
0.044
0.098
0.032
0.054
0.065
0.041
0.026
L(Hα)
40.40
41.88
41.93
41.51
40.06
39.83
41.63
41.85
40.22
39.08
<40.64
42.05
40.11
39.58
39.89
39.73
42.39
39.40
41.28
39.98
40.28
42.35
40.52
40.89
42.44a
41.96
39.81
<39.83
<40.17
42.41
41.52
41.41
41.60
41.44
41.51
42.45
41.05
41.79
41.79
40.95
41.56
40.69
41.31
F(Hα)
–14.70 (2)
–14.27 (1)
–14.06 (1)
–14.52 (2)
–14.60 (6)
–13.96 (1)
–13.29 (1)
–14.11 (1)
–14.81 (1)
– 14.79 (11)
<–15.76
–13.92 (1)
–13.90 (4)
–14.50 (1)
–14.50 (2)
–14.53 (3)
–13.91 (1)
–14.83 (14)
–12.55 (1)
–14.33 (1)
–15.42 (11)
–13.89 (1)
–13.79 (1)
–14.39 (3)
–12.28a (1)
–14.18 (1)
–14.20 (1)
<–14.21
<–14.19
–13.97 (1)
–14.09 (1)
–13.57 (1)
–14.77 (3)
–15.00 (15)
–14.75 (3)
–13.78 (1)
–15.38 (7)
–14.36 (1)
–13.77 (3)
–13.97 (1)
–14.48 (2)
–14.93 (3)
–13.89 (1)
Hβ
0.32 (20)
0.24 (8)
0.33 (1)
0.53 (15)
0.24 (25)
0.15 (8)
0.31 (1)
0.22 (5)
<1.27
0.32 (32)
–
0.25 (4)
0.22 (7)
<2.20
<0.85
0.18 (30)
0.29 (3)
<0.72
0.42 (1)
0.29 (11)
<1.86
0.28 (4)
0.25 (3)
0.26 (28)
–
0.61 (32)
<0.99
–
–
0.32 (1)
0.33 (3)
0.14 (1)
0.23 (15)
0.44 (15)
0.42 (6)
0.36 (1)
<0.23
0.25 (4)
0.29 (4)
0.30 (1)
0.22 (10)
0.37 (11)
0.27 (1)
[O III]λ5007
1.58 (4)
1.28 (1)
4.17 (1)
0.28 (20)
1.07 (2)
0.43 (2)
3.55 (1)
2.80 (1)
0.62 (23)
1.38 (6)
–
2.63 (1)
0.87 (1)
<2.20
<0.92
0.48 (16)
2.97 (1)
<1.25
2.09 (1)
1.44 (2)
<1.69
2.08 (1)
3.01 (1)
3.59 (1)
1.00a (1)
1.09 (18)
<1.10
–
–
2.26 (1)
3.40 (1)
1.08 (1)
1.07 (3)
1.68 (4)
1.40 (2)
2.73 (1)
0.63 (12)
3.53 (1)
2.71 (1)
2.48 (1)
0.91 (3)
1.69 (2)
0.46 (1)
[O I]λ6364
0.29 (8)
0.44 (1)
0.43 (3)
0.17 (10)
0.19 (16)
0.14 (12)
0.25 (1)
0.25 (1)
0.46 (5)
0.24 (28)
–
0.08 (10)
0.26 (16)
0.42 (2)
<0.18
0.18 (13)
0.05 (2)
–
0.64 (1)
0.50 (3)
<1.26
0.28 (3)
0.15 (3)
0.38 (5)
0.04a (10)
0.25 (32)
0.61 (1)
–
–
0.25 (9)
0.18 (2)
0.05 (1)
0.36 (7)
0.31 (32)
0.38 (7)
0.24 (2)
0.24 (28)
0.10 (28)
0.08 (7)
0.11 (3)
0.20 (15)
0.33 (8)
0.05 (9)
[N II]λ6584
2.06 (1)
0.70 (1)
1.13 (1)
0.92 (3)
1.85 (1)
0.99 (1)
0.63 (1)
0.57 (1)
0.77 (2)
2.32 (1)
–
0.31 (1)
2.45 (1)
2.48(1)
1.57 (1)
1.88 (2)
0.32 (1)
1.35 (3)
1.12 (1)
2.39 (1)
1.43 (7)
1.36 (1)
0.76 (1)
1.59 (1)
–
2.34 (1)
1.51 (1)
–
–
0.70 (1)
0.80 (1)
0.59 (1)
1.21 (3)
1.14 (27)
0.73 (4)
0.57 (1)
2.04 (3)
0.69 (1)
0.27 (8)
0.71 (1)
1.19 (1)
0.76 (4)
0.28 (1)
[S II]λ6716
0.32 (8)
0.23 (1)
0.38 (2)
0.55 (10)
0.50 (6)
0.37 (1)
0.39 (1)
0.27 (1)
0.62 (15)
0.81 (10)
–
0.16 (1)
0.56 (9)
<0.69
0.33 (4)
–
0.12 (3)
–
0.54 (1)
0.97 (1)
–
0.54 (1)
0.34 (10)
0.55 (4)
0.03a (7)
0.48 (1)
0.50 (1)
–
–
0.17 (1)
0.30 (1)
0.20 (1)
0.54 (8)
0.32 (27)
0.41 (16)
0.38 (6)
0.24 (29)
0.28 (3)
0.11 (1)
0.35 (1)
0.52 (1)
0.29 (11)
–
[S II]λ6731
0.41 (8)
0.21 (2)
0.42 (1)
–
0.52 (4)
0.32 (1)
0.33 (1)
0.21 (1)
–
<0.52
–
0.15 (3)
–
0.37 (1)
0.54 (1)
–
0.11 (7)
–
0.51 (1)
0.79 (3)
–
0.55 (1)
0.23 (7)
0.55 (1)
0.03a (9 )
0.35 (1)
0.50 (20)
–
–
0.14 (1)
0.30 (3)
0.20 (3)
0.33 (13)
0.33 (27)
0.34 (24)
0.29 (2)
0.31 (24)
0.19 (5)
0.09 (3)
0.26 (1)
0.49 (1)
0.31 (9)
–
–13.95
–13.99
–11.64
–13.26
–13.87
–13.03
F(Hα) broad
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
1055
Name
3C 213.1
3C 219.0
3C 223.0
3C 223.1
3C 227.0
3C 234.0
3C 236.0
3C 258.0
3C 264.0
3C 270.0
3C 272.1
3C 273.0
3C 274.0
3C 277.3
3C 284.0
3C 285.0
3C 287.1
3C 293.0
3C 296.0
3C 300.0
3C 303.0
3C 303.1
3C 305.0
3C 310.0
3C 314.1
3C 315.0
3C 317.0
3C 318.1
3C 319.0
3C 321.0
3C 323.1
3C 326.0
3C 327.0
3C 332.0
3C 338.0
3C 348.0
3C 353.0
3C 357.0
3C 371.0
3C 379.1
Table 6. continued.
Redshift
0.194
0.175
0.137
0.107
0.086
0.185
0.099
0.165
0.022
0.007
0.004
0.158
0.004
0.086
0.239
0.079
0.216
0.045
0.025
0.272
0.141
0.269
0.042
0.054
0.120
0.108
0.034
0.044
0.189
0.097
0.264
0.090
0.104
0.151
0.032
0.154
0.030
0.166
0.050
0.256
E(B − V)
0.028
0.018
0.012
0.017
0.026
0.019
0.011
0.020
0.023
0.018
0.040
0.021
0.022
0.012
0.016
0.017
0.025
0.017
0.025
0.035
0.019
0.036
0.026
0.042
0.020
0.062
0.037
0.035
0.012
0.044
0.042
0.053
0.089
0.024
0.012
0.094
0.439
0.045
0.036
0.062
L(Hα)
41.01
41.55
41.68
41.16
41.08
42.64
41.13
40.96
39.68
38.13
38.92
–
39.50
40.83
41.41
40.66
41.50
40.18
39.87
41.78
41.33
42.10
40.92
40.32
40.31
41.15
40.35
39.95
41.16
40.50
42.21
40.28
41.73
41.31
40.25
41.29
40.42
40.92
40.94
41.41
F(Hα)
–15.02 (3)
–14.38 (2)
–14.01 (1)
–14.30 (1)
–14.17 (2)
–13.33 (1)
–14.25 (1)
–14.90 (23)
–14.35 (1)
–14.93 (7)
–13.57 (1)
–
–13.11 (1)
–14.43 (1)
–14.82 (7)
–14.52 (1)
–14.62 (3)
–14.49 (3)
–14.28 (1)
–14.58 (2)
–14.39 (1)
–14.24 (1)
–13.68 (1)
–14.50 (1)
–15.25 (4)
–14.32 (1)
–14.08 (1)
–14.70 (4)
–14.84 (7)
–14.87 (2)
–14.12 (1)
–15.02 (5)
–13.70 (1)
–14.47 (2)
–14.11 (1)
–14.51 (1)
–13.90 (1)
–14.96 (3)
–13.82 (1)
–14.89 (6)
Hβ
0.21 (14)
0.25 (10)
0.23 (5)
0.28 (7)
0.44 (1)
0.25 (2)
0.22 (4)
0.11 (24)
0.27 (7)
<1.09
0.10 (3)
–
0.17 (1)
0.19 (9)
0.20 (12)
0.19 (6)
0.27 (9)
0.19 (17)
0.30 (12)
0.25 (9)
0.35 (4)
0.26 (2)
0.12 (4)
0.23 (7)
0.37 (16)
0.20 (4)
0.30 (5)
<0.58
<0.13
0.30 (11)
0.26 (11)
<0.23
0.27 (4)
0.28 (8)
0.18 (19)
0.25 (5)
0.20 (17)
0.23 (16)
0.29 (10)
0.31 (6)
[O III]λ5007
1.13 (3)
1.67 (1)
3.09 (1)
2.63 (1)
4.73 (1)
2.96 (1)
0.57 (2)
0.17 (15)
0.33 (10)
0.63 (25)
0.19 (4)
–
0.31 (1)
1.29 (1)
1.52 (1)
0.78 (1)
1.71 (1)
0.42 (10)
0.81 (2)
1.71 (1)
2.55 (1)
2.07 (1)
1.30 (1)
0.54 (3)
0.24 (24)
0.53 (1)
1.00 (2)
0.26 (32)
<0.10
2.58 (1)
3.93 (1)
1.31 (4)
3.20 (1)
3.14 (1)
0.21 (6)
0.13 (9)
0.53 (7)
1.08 (4)
1.01 (4)
2.80 (1)
[O I]λ6364
0.46 (6)
0.44 (3)
0.19 (3)
0.06 (15)
0.08 (18)
0.04 (8)
0.30 (3)
<0.47
0.22 (9)
0.52 (16)
0.23 (6)
–
0.36 (1)
0.29 (5)
<0.24
0.10 (10)
0.48 (4)
0.26 (3)
0.22 (23)
0.15 (13)
0.41 (2)
0.24 (3)
0.17 (7)
0.30 (4)
0.18 (23)
0.25 (2)
0.25 (5)
0.21 (19)
<0.27
0.06 (28)
0.20 (11)
0.37 (13)
0.14 (1)
0.21 (9)
0.18 (2)
0.27 (5)
0.30 (2)
0.46 (7)
0.51 (2)
0.21 (19)
[N II]λ6584
1.41 (2)
0.90 (1)
0.63 (1)
0.81 (1)
0.19 (4)
0.28 (1)
0.69 (1)
<2.14
1.45 (1)
0.72 (14)
1.28 (1)
–
2.32 (1)
0.79 (3)
0.61 (11)
0.54 (2)
0.68 (4)
0.88 (1)
1.84 (1)
0.48 (4)
1.06 (1)
1.03 (1)
1.77 (1)
1.74 (1)
0.53 (7)
0.72 (1)
1.92 (1)
1.02 (3)
0.30 (6)
0.50 (3)
0.29 (32)
1.93 (3)
0.73 (1)
0.97 (1)
1.63 (1)
1.27 (1)
1.09 (1)
1.37 (4)
1.14 (1)
1.54 (5)
[S II]λ6716
0.38 (10)
0.24 (6)
0.25 (3)
0.22 (4)
0.16 (5)
0.08 (3)
0.49 (2)
–
0.33 (8)
<0.37
0.52 (1)
–
0.68 (1)
0.32 (1)
<0.45
0.27 (4)
0.29 (7)
0.66 (2)
0.43 (2)
0.33 (4)
0.46 (2)
0.38 (2)
0.48 (1)
0.84 (1)
0.52 (8)
0.51 (1)
0.58 (1)
0.29 (9)
0.15 (25)
0.18 (8)
0.10 (11)
0.41 (12)
0.30 (1)
0.37 (6)
0.41 (1)
–
0.56 (1)
–
0.32 (3)
0.30 (13)
[S II]λ6731
0.28 (12)
0.24 (7)
0.21 (3)
0.19 (5)
0.16 (11)
0.07 (1)
0.35 (3)
–
0.33 (22)
<0.53
0.34 (1)
–
0.77 (1)
0.28 (5)
<0.41
0.19 (6)
0.29 (7)
0.66 (10)
0.38 (10)
0.23 (4)
0.39 (3)
0.48 (1)
0.40 (1)
0.74 (2)
0.33 (13)
0.37 (2)
0.49 (1)
0.16 (13)
<0.14
0.15 (11)
0.08 (21)
0.50 (11)
0.24 (1)
0.36 (7)
0.33 (1)
–
0.43 (1)
–
0.29 (1)
0.28 (14)
–12.77
–12.37
–13.46
–13.85
–11.51
–12.52
–13.29
–13.87
F(Hα) broad
1056
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Redshift
0.161
0.058
0.017
0.091
0.056
0.201
0.024
0.059
0.127
0.054
0.102
0.214
0.290
0.026
0.056
0.017
0.081
0.233
0.220
0.269
0.030
E(B − V)
0.053
0.070
0.335
0.080
0.071
0.059
0.121
0.187
0.096
0.630
0.145
0.089
0.358
0.065
0.083
0.167
0.137
0.038
0.066
0.092
0.069
L(Hα)
41.79
41.39
40.17
40.83
41.57
41.01
39.08
41.20
41.07
40.12
41.40
41.07
41.55
39.78
42.50a
39.71
41.16
42.48
42.17
42.09
40.15
F(Hα)
–14.05 (1)
–13.51 (1)
–13.63 (1)
–14.47 (2)
–13.29 (1)
–15.05 (3)
–15.03 (3)
–13.71 (1)
–14.55 (1)
–14.72 (3)
–14.01 (1)
–15.06 (10)
–14.87 (1)
–14.40 (1)
–12.37a (1)
–14.09 (1)
–14.05 (1)
–13.72 (1)
–13.97 (1)
–14.25 (3)
–14.17 (1)
Hβ
0.31 (2)
0.31 (1)
<1.08
0.23 (14)
0.32 (1)
0.30 (15)
<1.95
0.25 (3)
0.24 (6)
<1.09
0.19 (4)
0.20 (22)
<0.54
0.08 (24)
–
0.10 (23)
0.23 (5)
0.32 (1)
0.16 (6)
0.25 (3)
0.17 (27)
[O III]λ5007
3.83 (1)
2.45 (1)
<1.08
0.74 (3)
3.24 (1)
1.10 (5)
<2.19
3.54 (1)
0.54 (3)
1.61 (9)
1.88 (1)
3.09 (1)
<0.82
0.27 (7)
1.00a (1)
0.30 (24)
1.53 (1)
2.15 (1)
0.73 (1)
0.49 (7)
0.46 (6)
[O I]λ6364
0.11 (9)
0.29 (1)
0.10 (17)
0.26 (13)
0.27 (1)
0.24 (16)
0.37 (13)
0.13 (3)
0.27 (5)
0.33 (20)
0.22 (3)
–
<0.67
0.19 (8)
0.04a (6)
0.13 (9)
0.27 (2)
0.15 (2)
0.12 (1)
0.39 (4)
0.26 (9)
[N II]λ6584
0.53 (1)
1.49 (1)
0.57 (1)
2.33 (1)
0.47 (1)
1.77 (2)
2.97 (1)
0.84 (1)
0.79 (1)
1.43 (1)
1.09 (1)
2.08 (9)
1.61 (1)
1.84 (1)
–
1.38 (1)
1.08 (1)
0.78 (1)
1.77 (1)
1.23 (2)
2.77 (1)
[S II]λ6716
–
0.12 (8)
0.11 (7)
0.41 (1)
0.10 (1)
0.46 (9)
<0.44
0.25 (1)
0.44 (3)
0.37 (8)
0.46 (2)
0.63 (19)
<0.66
0.35 (5)
0.02a (10)
0.29 (7)
0.36 (1)
0.22 (1)
0.35 (1)
0.60 (1)
0.47 (1)
[S II]λ6731
–
0.13 (9)
0.08 (10)
0.37 (1)
0.10 (1)
0.34 (14)
<0.97
0.24 (2)
0.40 (12)
0.40 (4)
0.30 (1)
0.49 (18)
0.46 (28)
0.45 (1)
0.02a (10)
0.22 (1)
0.29 (1)
0.24 (1)
0.33 (1)
0.54 (4)
0.32 (1)
–12.03
–11.60
–11.61
F(Hα) broad
Column description: (1) source name; (2) redshift; (3) Galactic absorption; (4) logarithm of the luminosity of the Hα narrow line, in erg s−1 ; (5) logarithm of the Hα flux in erg cm−2 s−1 ; (6 through
11) de-reddened flux ratios of the key diagnostic lines with respect to Hα. The values in parentheses report the errors (in percentage) of each line. Missing values marked with “–” correspond to
lines outside the coverage of the spectra or severely aﬀected by telluric bands. When no lines are visible we only give the upper limit for Hα; (12) logarithm of the flux of the Hα broad component,
when visible.
Notes: (a) for 3C 111 and 3C 445, no narrow Hα measurement is possible and we give instead the [O III] luminosity, referring the flux ratios to this line. No narrow lines are visible in 3C 273 and
we only report its broad Hα flux.
Name
3C 381.0
3C 382.0
3C 386.0
3C 388.0
3C 390.3
3C 401.0
3C 402.0
3C 403.0
3C 424.0
3C 430.0
3C 433.0
3C 436.0
3C 438.0
3C 442.0
3C 445.0
3C 449.0
3C 452.0
3C 456.0
3C 459.0
3C 460.0
3C 465.0
Table 6. continued.
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
1057
1058
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
Fig. 6. Example of starlight removal using models diﬀering by one step in stellar age or in metalicity. The center panel shows the best fit for
3C 310, while the two flanking figures have (left) lower metalicity and (right) younger stellar population.
Fig. 7. Comparison of our [O III] luminosity measurements with the values collected by Willott et al. (1999) from dishomogeneous works in
literature (left panel), by Simpson et al. (1996) (center panel) and by Tadhunter et al. (1993) (right panel). The luminosities are in units of erg s−1
while the fluxes are in units of erg s−1 cm−2 . The solid line traces where the compared objects have the same fluxes, while the two dotted lines
above and below the solid line limit the region in which the fluxes diﬀer by less than a factor of 2. The arrows indicate the upper limits.
Furthermore, other mechanisms contribute to the continuum
emission, e.g. nebular continuum and light from the accretion
disk (direct or via scattering). However, a full separation of these
contributions requires a detailed analysis on a object-by-object
basis in order to properly measure the rather large set of free parameters describing the various components. Moreover this fitting requires spectra with a high signal to noise, and this is not
always achieved in our data. We defer such a study to a forthcoming paper.
There is however a general consideration that can be drawn
already at this stage. Nuclear emission and nebular continuum
are expected to be in general bluer that the starlight. This biases the derived age of the single stellar population that appears
younger that it actually is. It also dilutes the stellar absorption
features, thus biasing the metalicity to lower values. The main
resulting eﬀect is an overestimate of the correction of the Hβ line
and, consequently, an over-rating of this line, particularly in the
objects with brightest optical nuclei.
4. Results
4.1. Emission line data quality
We summarize here the data quality of our spectra from the
point of view of the measurements of the emission line intensities. Only in three radio galaxies (namely 3C 052, 3C 129.1
and 3C 130) did we fail to detect any emission line; in all cases
an accurate redshift can be measured by fitting the stellar population models based on stellar absorption features.
Leaving aside these objects, the Hα line can be measured
with a statistical accuracy of better than 10% with only three
exceptions. In the red part of the spectrum, the [O I]λ6300 line
is detected in 95% of the 3C galaxies. The completeness of the
[S II] doublet measurements is slightly lower (87%) due to our
choice to favor the inclusion of the [O I] in the high resolution
spectra but, when covered by the data, the [S II] line is also measurable in 95% of the objects. In the blue part of the spectrum
there are ∼15% of the sources in which Hβ and/or [O III] are not
detected.
All together, these measurements will enable us to locate the
vast majority of the sources in the diagnostic planes that compare pairs of emission line ratios and also to perform a detailed
analysis of the relationship between the multiwavelength characteristics of the 3C sources with their emission line properties.
In addition, a broad Hα line is seen in 18 galaxies and these
are discussed in more detail in the Sect. 4.3.
4.2. Comparison with previous results
There is a extremely vast amount of spectroscopic data accumulated for the 3CR sample in the literature over the last 40 years
and it is therefore, on the one hand, very interesting to contrast
our measurements with those available, but, on the other hand,
diﬃcult to perform a full comparison on an object-by-object basis. We therefore decided to focus on three papers, those having
the largest overlap with our sample.
Willott et al. (1999) collected [O III] measurements from
optical spectra and images of 3CR objects from the literature (these data are available at the web-page: http://
www.science.uottawa.ca/~cwillott/3crr/3crr.html).
There are 28 sources in common with our sample. Figure 7 (left
panel) shows the comparison between their data collection and
our measurements, performed after scaling their reported luminosities to our cosmological parameters. These data show large
discrepancies, even in excess of a factor of 100, particularly for
the sources with the lowest [O III] fluxes. Sources with stronger
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
1059
Fig. 8. Radio galaxies with a broad Hα emission line. The dashed line represents the continuum emission level. A null continuum level implies that
the continuum has been removed during the process of starlight subtraction. The flux is measured in 10−18 erg cm−2 s−1 Å−1 while the wavelength
is in Å units.
1060
S. Buttiglione et al.: Optical spectra of 3CR sources. I.
fluxes are in better agreement with our results, but there are still
large diﬀerences.
In the central and right panels we compare our [O III] fluxes
with the values found by Simpson et al. (1996) and Tadhunter
et al. (1993), derived from long-slit spectra of two complete samples, with respectively 8 and 16 sources in common with our
3CR subsample. Their data have been corrected for Galactic absorption before comparison. Quite reassuringly, essentially all
sources have [O III] fluxes diﬀering by less than a factor of 2.
4.3. Radio galaxies with broad emission lines
In 18 sources, all of them FR II galaxies, we detected a broad
Hα component. Broad lines can be very strong, as in 3C 273,
or, as in 3C 184.1, they become clearly visible only after the
subtraction of the stellar light. Figure 8 shows all spectra showing the Hα broad components: the dashed line, representing the
continuum emission, corresponds to the zero flux level when the
SSP has been subtracted, otherwise it represents the AGN power
law emission.
In some cases they are symmetric and centered on the narrow
component (3C 287.1), but more often they are highly red or blue
shifted (3C 184.1, 3C 227). In most objects the Hα line presents
a highly irregular profile, with “bumps” in the line wings. For
example, in 3C 197.1 and 3C 445 the broad component has a
step-shaped emission in the red wing, while in 3C 227 the stepshaped emission is on the blue side of the line. We also confirm
the “double-humped” shape of the BLR of 3C 332 (Eracleous &
Halpern 1994).
The technique used to measure the narrow line fluxes (described in Sect. 3.2) provides us also with flux estimates for the
broad components. In the cases where no satisfactory fit was
obtained with multiple gaussians, we measured the flux by directly integrating the area defined by the broad component. The
Hα broad line fluxes are reported in the last column of Table 6.
We will explore in more detail the issue of the presence and
properties of broad lines in a forthcoming paper.
5. Summary
We presented a homogeneous and 92% complete dataset of optical nuclear spectra of the 113 3CR radio sources with redshift <0.3. The data were obtained mostly from observations
performed at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and are complemented with SDSS spectra, available for 18 galaxies. For each
source we obtained a low (20 Å) resolution spectrum covering
the ∼3500−8000 Å spectral range and a higher (5 Å) resolution spectrum centered on the Hα line and ∼1700 Å wide. From
the two dimensional calibrated data, we extracted spectra over a
2 × 2 nuclear region. A complete atlas of the optical nuclear
spectra is presented.
We separated the contribution of the emission produced
by the active nucleus from the galaxy starlight. This has been
achieved by subtracting the best fit model of stellar emission
from a grid of single stellar population templates. We then measured and tabulated the fluxes of the main emission lines by fitting gaussians to the residual spectra. We discussed the eﬀects
of the possible mis-match between the galaxies stellar population and the adopted templates; the conclusion of this analysis is
that they do not aﬀect significantly the line measurements, with
only very few exceptions where the estimate of the Hβ flux is
compromised.
Only in three radio galaxies did we fail to detect any emission line. In most cases (∼90% of the sample) we were able to
measure all the brightest lines, e.g. Hβ, [O III]λλ4959, 5007,
[O I]λλ6300, 64, Hα, [N II]λλ6548, 84, and [S II]λλ6716, 31.
In addition, a broad Hα line is seen in 18 galaxies. They show
a wide variety in terms of line profiles, from well behaved symmetric lines centered onto the narrow Hα, to “double humped”
lines, but also include highly irregular shapes, with secondary
peaks and steps.
The data presented here will be used in follow up papers to
address the connection between the optical spectral characteristics and the multiwavelength properties of the sample.
Acknowledgements. We thank the referee, Katherine Inskip, for her useful comments and suggestions. S.B. and A.Ce. acknowledge the Italian MIUR for financial support. A.Ca. acknowledges COFIN-INAF-2006 grant financial support. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
(NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. California institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data
System (ADS). This research has made use of the SDSS Archive, funding
for the creation and distribution of which was provided by the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the US Department
of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and The
Higher Education Funding Council for England. The oﬃcial SDSS Web site
is www.sdss.org. The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research
Consortium for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are
the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam,
University of Basel, University of Cambridge, Case Western Reserve University,
University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced
Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Joint
Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics
and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences
(LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for
Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New
Mexico State University, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh,
University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval
Observatory, and the University of Washington.
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